Africa

Sahara, The West Coast, East and South Africa, Madagascar

Mythologies abound in Africa. Tribes possess their own traditions, and even where they share a language with their neighbours, like the Bantu-speakers of East and South Africa, it is the diversity of local belief that surprises rather than the evidence of a common heritage. Factors making for this mythological variety are several. First, there is the size of the continent itself, along with the accompanying range of climate. Some tribes wander the open plains, herding cattle and hunting game; others raise crops or fertile riverside clearings amid dense equatorial jungle: these peoples would find the habitat of the Bushmen unendurable. Once the sole inhabitants of the area south of the Zambezi River, the Bushmen were decimated by incoming Bantu tribesmen and by later white settlers, until today surviving tribes eke out a living on the fringes of the Kalahari Desert. A second factor, therefore, is the migration of peoples, an historical process about which we are only dimly aware. Recorded history starts late in Africa so that inferences have to be drawn from oral tradition, supplemented where possible by information collected in the journals of travellers and explorers. The last factor to be taken into account is the presence of separate ethnic groups. North of the immense Sahara Desert this situation is transparent in the relation of the indigenous Berbers and their Arab conquerors. Only in the mountainous interior of Algeria and Morocco are vestiges of the old Berber culture preserved. Nevertheless, West Africa is the part of the continent with the greatest concentration of different peoples, since between the Senegal River and the headwaters of the Congo River there are 2,000 known languages and dialects.

Almost all African peoples believe in a supreme god who is omniscient and omnipresent. The Akan of Ghana refer to this deity as Brekyirihunuade, ‘he who knows and sees all’, while the Zulu of South Africa simply call him ‘the wise one’, uKqili. God's ‘great eye’, according to the Ganda people of Uganda, keeps perpetual watch everywhere and at all times: it never blinks. Nothing can be hidden, assert the Yoruba of Nigeria, because his vision includes ‘both the inside and outside of man’. A sky god, the deity is thought of as father, mother, grandfather, elder, supreme ancestor, friend, and companion. The Koma of Ethiopia, a tribe which sacrifices dogs—their king eating the tail at an annual reinvestiture—call the sky ‘god's belly’. When lightning strikes cattle, the Zulu say that uKqili ‘has slaughtered for himself among his own food … he is hungry; he kills for himself.’ Thunder, on the other hand, is represented sometimes as the god at play. Though looked upon generally as benevolent, the ways of the sky god are inscrutable, and he also sends men their ills. The Akamba of Kenya suppose Asa, ‘the father’, to have said, ‘It is I who made the people; whom I love, he will thrive; and whom I refuse, he will die.’ Yet the Herero of South-west Africa simply explain death as god calling away old people.

A myth current in Liberia offers a quite different explanation for the origin of mortality. Once Sno-Nysoa, the creator god, sent his four sons into the world. He wished them to return, but they wanted to stay, and Earth, too, tried to keep them. Then Sno-Nysoa used his power and took his sons back to heaven. When they could not wake up in the morning, he said to Earth: ‘I have called them home. I leave their bodies with you.’ Since that time Sno-Nysoa has used his power to take men away from the world, and the way to the deceased is blocked, on account of the Earth's attempt to keep the divine children. Before Sno-Nysoa and the Earth quarrelled, however, sickness, suffering, and death were unknown. Mankind considered what should be done. The result was that a cat was sent to the medicine-man, to fetch a remedy which should cure the sick and awake the dead. On the way back, the cat, putting the medicine on the stump of a tree, took a bath in a river. Then she forgot about her errand. So they sent the cat to look for the medicine, but she did not find it, and went back to the medicine-man again. He was angered at the cat's carelessness, and cursed it roundly. Moreover, he said that ‘thereafter, though a tree be cut, if the stump remain, the tree will grow again; but when men die, it will be the end.’

The wrath of the medicine-man is crucial. He is the intermediary between god and man. Africans, like most other peoples, feel that they cannot or should not approach divinity alone or directly, and must do so through the mediation of special persons. Among the Maasai of East Africa, for instance, the medicine-men, or iloibonok, come from one clan and trace their hereditary powers back for ten generations to the first who fell, full-grown, from the sky. While all Maasai can address En-kai, ‘sky’, in prayer, the iloibonok are in daily communication with him through dreams, trances, and signs. His sanction, through them, must be obtained for any important action. Under the protecting eye of these experienced initiates in the sacred ways unfolds the pattern of tribal life: birth, marriage, coming-of-age, and death. Ancestors hardly impinge on the consciousness of the Maasai, since they have no distinct notion of personal survival after death. The corpse is normally left in the bush to be eaten by hyenas: at most the relatives of an elder would pile heavy stones on top. The souls of old men, they believe in particular, may return in the form of snakes.

With the exception of the nomadic Maasai, ancestor cults feature prominently in the mythologies of East and South Africa, whereas in West Africa an extended pantheon offers more scope for worship and speculation. There is room for divinities other than the creator god as well as the accidents of fate and fortune so necessary for mythological development. A folklore personage like Anansi, or Mr Spider, appears to be almost a national hero in Sierra Leone. This trickster is shrewd, designing, and selfish; from the safety of a tree Mr Spider enjoys the sport he has helped to create by his subtle wit and takes advantage of the victims to supply himself with food. Neither the elephant nor the hippopotamus can cope with him, and they are tricked into a contest that brings both of them to death. ‘You might be stronger,’ he reflects, ‘but you are also more stupid.’

In Dahomey there still exist innumerable shrines to local gods, their worship little affected by Islam or Christianity. Beneath Mawu, the moon, and her twin brother Lisa, the sun, often conceived as the androgynous creator deity Mawu-Lisa, preside their offspring, the gods associated with the weather, the earth, the forest, and metal; the latter, the Fon people consider, was formed from divine excrement. Many priests are dedicated to the service of the Fon gods, vodu. According to tradition, Mawu-Lisa set the universe in order before she-he made vegetation, animals, and men. They celebrate this in a four-day week, the first day of which is believed to be when Mawu-Lisa established the universal order and when she-he created man from water and clay. On the second day the earth was made habitable for men. On the third day man received sight, the gift of speech, and understanding of the world about him. On the fourth, and last, day of creation Mawu-Lisa presented man with technology.

The Fon, a warlike tribe, must have appropriated the gods of their vanquished foes, since they possess a syncretic pantheon. But conflict that occurs within a homogeneous group has to be fitted into the divine scheme, too. A Yoruba myth pins the blame firmly on the trickster god Edshu. Once this mischievous deity came walking along a path between two fields. He noticed in either field a farmer at work and decided to play a trick on both of them. He donned a hat that was on one side red but on the other white, green in front and black behind. Later that day the two farmers walked back to the village and talked of the stranger they had seen but, whereas one of them said that he had worn a red hat, the other insisted with equal conviction that the hat had been white. The conversation soon turned into an argument, each farmer accusing his fellow of blindness or intoxication, till at last they came to blows. When they drew their knives, they were brought by neighbours before the headman for judgement. Edshu was among the crowd at the trial, and when the headman admitted his own bewilderment, the trickster god revealed himself, made known his joke, and displayed the hat. ‘The two farmers could not help but quarrel,’ he said. ‘I wanted it that way. Spreading strife is my greatest joy.’ By the personification of the four directions of the world, as represented in the colours red, white, green, and black, Edshu reveals how restricted is the viewpoint of mankind. As William Blake remarked: ‘The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.’

Divine favour is, of course, sought by sacrifice. Propitiation offerings are made during drought, famine, or serious illness; otherwise they may be intended to ward off attack, evil, or misfortune. The usual sacrificial objects are animals like cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, and fowl, but evidence exists to show that human beings were formerly used. The Makoni of Zimbabwe have a legend of strangulation at a rain sacrifice. Long ago a drought lasted for a whole year. When the wanganga, the medicine-men, ordered the sacrifice of a noble virgin, it happened that a girl of marriage-able age innocent of a man could not be found. Therefore the wanganga advised that a young girl, who had not yet reached puberty, be imprisoned until she was ready for marriage. Though this took two years, in the course of which no rain fell and all the cattle died, the plan was strictly kept. At last the moment of sacrifice came, the maiden was strangled by the wanganga, and her body buried in an antheap beneath the roots of a great tree. For three days the Makoni people danced round this tree, which grew till it reached the sky. Then the morning star appeared, the crown of the tree spread across the sky, blocking out the moon and stars, and a tempest arose. The leaves of the great tree were torn off the branches and tossed into the sky as clouds, storm clouds that for thirty days without cease poured the waters of heaven over the parched earth. Such, say the Makoni, was the origin of the rain sacrifice.

In modern times changes have taken place in Africa. The long isolation of the continent has come to an end through slavery, imperialism, urbanization, money, communications, missionaries, and, most recently, independence. The old religions are in retreat, while the African idea of a supreme deity has been incorporated in Islam and Christianity. Many temples have disappeared, but the ancestor cults continue with some vigour. Yet there remain numerous living mythologies, not all of which have been properly recorded, as a testimony of the rich past of what was after all the cradle of mankind.

(′af·ri·kə)

(geography) The second largest continent, with an area of 11,700,000 square miles (30,420,000 square kilometers); bisected midway by the Equator, above and below which it shows symmetry of climate and vegetation zones.

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The second-largest continent, connected to Asia by the Isthmus of Suez and lying between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic and Indian oceans.

 

A continent that straddles the Equator, extending between 37°N and 35°S. It is the second largest continent, exceeded by Eurasia. The area, shared by 55 countries, is 11,700,000 mi² (30,300,00 km²), approximately 20% of the world's total land area. Despite its large area, it has a simple geological structure, a compact shape with a smooth outline, and a symmetrical distribution of climate and vegetation.

Africa has few inlets or natural harbors and a small number of offshore islands that are largely volcanic in origin. Madagascar is the largest island, with an area of 250,000 mi² (650,000 km²).

Africa is primarily a high interior plateau bounded by steep escarpments. These features show evidence of the giant faults created during the drift of neighboring continents. The surface of the plateau ranges from 4000–5000 ft (1200–1500 m) in the south to about 1000 ft (300 m) in the Sahara. These differences in elevation are particularly apparent in the Great Escarpment region in southern Africa, where the land suddenly drops from 5000 ft (1500 m) to a narrow coastal belt. Although most of the continent is classified as plateau, not all of its surface is flat. Rather, most of its physiographic features have been differentially shaped by processes such as folding, faulting, volcanism, erosion, and deposition. See also Escarpment; Fault and fault structures; Plateau.

The rift valley system is one of the most striking features of the African landscape. Sliding blocks have created wide valleys 20–50 mi (30–80 km) wide bounded by steep walls of variable depth and height. Within the eastern and western branches of the system, there is a large but shallow depression occupied by Lake Victoria. See also Rift valley.

Several volcanic features are associated with the rift valley system. The most extensive of these are the great basalt highlands that bound either side of the rift system in Ethiopia. These mountains rise over 10,000 ft (3000 m), with the highest peak, Ras Dashan, reaching 15,158 ft (4500 m). There are also several volcanic cones, including the most renowned at Mount Elgon (14,175 ft; 4321 m); Mount Kenya (17,040 ft; 5194 m); and Mount Kilimanjaro, reaching its highest point at Mount Kibo (19,320 ft; 5889 m). Mounts Kenya and Kilimanjaro are permanently snowcapped. See also Basalt.

Since the Equator transects the continent, the climatic conditions in the Northern Hemisphere are mirrored in the Southern Hemisphere. Nearly three-quarters of the continent lies within the tropics and therefore has high temperatures throughout the year. Frost is uncommon except in mountainous areas or some desert areas where nighttime temperatures occasionally drop below freezing. These desert areas also record some of the world's highest daytime temperatures, including an unconfirmed record of 136.4°F (58°C) at Azizia, Tripoli. See also Equatorial currents.

Africa can be classified into broad regions based on the climatic conditions and their associated vegetation and soil types. The tropical rainforest climate starts at the Equator and extends toward western Africa. The region has rainfall up to 200 in. (500 cm) per year and continuously high temperatures averaging 79°F (26°C). The eastern equatorial region does not experience these conditions because of the highlands and the presence of strong seasonal winds that originate from southern Asia.

The areal extent of the African rainforest region (originally 18%) has dwindled to less than 7% as a result of high rates of deforestation. Despite these reductions, the region is still one of the most diverse ecological zones in the continent. See also Rainforest.

Extensive savanna grasslands are found along the Sudanian zone of West Africa, within the Zambezian region and the Somalia-Masai plains. Large areas such as the Serengeti plains in the Somalia-Masai plains are home to a diverse range of wild animals.

The tropical steppe forms a transition zone between the humid areas and the deserts. This includes the area bordering the south of the Sahara that is known as the Sahel, the margins of the Kalahari basin, and the Karoo grasslands in the south.

The structural evolution of the continent has much to do with the drainage patterns. Originally, most of the rivers did not drain into the oceans, and many flowed into the large structural basins of the continent. However, as the continental drift occurred and coasts became more defined, the rivers were forced to change courses, and flow over the escarpments in order to reach the sea. Several outlets were formed, including deep canyons, waterfalls, cataracts, and rapids as the rivers carved out new drainage patterns across the landscape. Most of the rivers continue to flow through or receive some of their drainage from the basins, but about 48% of them now have a direct access into the surrounding oceans. The major rivers are the Nile, Congo (Zaire), Niger, and Zambezi. See also River.

The tremendous diversity in wildlife continues to be one of the primary attractions of this continent. Africa is one of the few remaining places where one can view game fauna in a natural setting. There is a tremendous diversity in species, including birds, reptiles, and large mammals. Wildlife are concentrated in central and eastern Africa because of the different types of vegetation which provide a wide range of habitats.

Africa is not a densely populated continent. With an estimated population of 743,000,000, its average density is 64 per square mile (26 per square kilometer). However, some areas have large concentrations, including the Nile valley, the coastal areas of northern and western Africa, the highland and volcanic regions of eastern Africa, and parts of southern Africa. These are mostly areas of economic or political significance.

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For more information on Africa, visit Britannica.com.

Introduction

It is almost impossible to talk about a unified history of photography in Africa, as there have been so many cultural responses to the medium, and so many national and regional styles. Early 21st-century photographic practices there are amongst the most complex and vibrant imaging cultures in the world, embracing intersections between the global and the local. Many draw on long traditions of depicting the human body in sculptural and graphic forms.

The history of photography in Africa begins with the colonial introduction of the medium. Much photography was integrally linked to exploration and the development of colonial infrastructures. Imaging also drew on established ideas about Africa. Some were related to concepts of race and culture: in North Africa, for example, to a long Orientalist tradition; whereas in parts of sub-Saharan Africa an ethnographic tradition often became absorbed into general colonial practice. Photographs by colonial photographers circulated widely, and photographs of Africa could be bought in London, Paris, or New York. However, by the late 19th century many African photographers were developing their own businesses, providing images for both local and colonial clients. From this tradition has emerged the wealth of African photography: studio and documentary work, photojournalism and arts practice, and an associated photographic culture including archives of the post-colonial African nation-states, festivals like the Rencontres de la Photographie Africaine (since 1994), and publications.Elizabeth EdwardsAnthology of African and Indian Ocean Photography (Eng. edn. 1999). Deutsch, J. G., Probst, P., and Schmidt, H. (eds.), African Modernities (2002).

West Africa

Photography arrived in the form of Western itinerant daguerreotypists working the main coastal cities, and colonial photographers accompanying expeditions. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the daguerreotype had reached Freetown by 1845; the earliest surviving examples prove its presence by the mid-1850s. From the late 1860s to the 1880s, permanent studios run by African photographers were established in several coastal cities: St-Louis, Conacry, Freetown, Monrovia, Abidjan, Accra, Lomé, and Lagos, with entrepreneurs like the Lutterodt family operating in several locations. While colonial photographers served political and administrative purposes, these studios met private and local needs.

West African studio photography expanded rapidly in the late 19th century, challenged only by the postcard as the dominant photographic genre. Inland cities such as Bamako got their first permanent establishments. Pioneers included Alex Agbaglo Acolatse (1880-1975) in Lomé, Meïssa Gaye in St-Louis, and Alphonso Lisk-Carew in Freetown. While often trained by Europeans, and initially passing on European studio traditions, African portrait photographers eventually developed distinctive styles, pursuing modernity in their own way. Local artists, for example, contributed painted studio backgrounds depicting local city scenes. West African dyed cloth or woven mats also become popular as props or backdrops. Studio portraiture in 20th-century West Africa increasingly manifested African forms of self-expression and ways of seeing.

The period immediately after the Second World War, with independence approaching, was a golden age for studio photography. Often teachers, or ex-soldiers of the colonial armies, this generation of practitioners included influential, visually sophisticated, and eventually celebrated figures such as Seydou Keïta in Bamako, Mali, Mama Casset (1908-92) in Dakar, Senegal, and Cornélius Yao Augustt Azaglo (b. 1924) in Korhogo, Côte d'Ivoire. Many, like Keïta, worked exclusively in the studio; others, like Augustt Azaglo, travelled from village to village equipped only with a camera and a simple backdrop. West African studio photography is a collaborative enterprise: sitters define who they are or want to be; the photographer colludes; the studio is a space of desire and fantasy. Another Bamako professional, Malick Sidibé, also took his camera outside the studio to record the exuberant leisure activities of Malian youth in the early days of independence. The work of these and other photographers countered the products of the once-dominant ‘ethnographic gaze’. Yet their photographs seem sui generis, performing and producing identities rather than reacting against alien, imposed ones. But, as amateur photography spread in the 1970s, black-and-white studio photography declined, revived only partially by the arrival of colour.

Today's West African scene is vibrant. With his detailed and extravagant screens, increasingly sought after by collectors, Philip Kwame Apagya (b. 1958), working in Accra, Ghana, has reinvented colour studio work. The infinitely variable self is the subject of Samuel Fosso's (b. 1962; Bangui, Central African Republic) playfully obsessive after-hours studio self-portraits. Other current photographic projects, often hosted by art institutions, include the DOF-group, and Akinbode Akinbyi's photographic engagement with the vast megalopolis of Lagos, Nigeria, treated as a system rather than a space for particular events. Dorris Haron Kasco (b. 1966; Côte d'Ivoire) also chronicles urban culture, in edgy photographs of the urban other: the street child, the fool, the outcast living in his or her unique and isolated universe.Jan-Erik LundströmViditz-Ward, V., ‘Photography in Sierra Leone, 1850-1918’, Africa, 57 (1987). David, P., Alex A. Acolatse (1880-1975): hommage à l'un des premiers photographes togolais (1993). Foadey, G. E., Pivin, J.-L., and Medoune Seye, B., Mama Casset et les précurseurs de la photographie au Sénégal (1994). Nimis, E., Photographes de Bamako de 1935 à nos jours (1998). Wendl, T., ‘Entangled Traditions: Photography and the History of Media in Southern Ghana’, Res, 39 (2001).

East Africa

The region's first photographers came from both India and Europe c. 1870. In Zanzibar, A. C. Gomez from Goa started the first studio in 1868, building on an established practice in India. Many more studios opened c. 1890, in Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, and Mombasa. William D. Young, who also worked as official photographer for the Ugandan railways, documenting the construction of the Mombasa-Kampala line, founded the famous Dempster Studio in Mombasa (with a branch in Nairobi in 1905).

Western travellers and explorers also photographed in East Africa. Joseph Thomson (1858-95), for example, used the camera not only to record and classify Africans but also, fusing photography and local magic, as ‘medicine’, a ‘soul-stealing machine’, and a ‘magic gun’. Such behaviour provoked considerable indigenous resistance to being photographed. Despite initial opposition, however, photography was widely accepted in coastal towns by c. 1900, in the urban hinterland by the 1920s, and in rural areas by the 1950s-1960s.

As elsewhere, photography was integrated into a range of practices. Colonial administrations used it for control (e.g. in the production of identity cards). Colonial newspapers increasingly incorporated photojournalism. Photographers like Omar Said Bakor (1932-93; Bakor Studio) at Lamu, Kenya, recorded the history of the town in the 1960s and did documentary work on subjects such as mental illness. However, photography's major role was as a ‘theatre of self’, enabling Africans to experience themselves as ‘modern’; indeed, it helped to define a specifically African modernity.

Connecting with existing local visual traditions such as ornamental woodcarving, architectural plasterwork, textiles, and calligraphy, photography developed a variety of specific local histories. The Bakor Studio, for example, used montage to express patrilineal hierarchies, or reworked complex Swahili rhetoric, visualizing proverbs and sayings in photocollages. It also merged the ornamental tradition of Islamic art with photographic portraits in a way that subordinated the portrait to Islamic codes. Furthermore, photography drew on pre-existing ways of encoding cultural meaning. In portraits, clothing and textiles, especially the rectangular printed kanga, printed patterns and proverbs, provided subtexts that turned photographs into ‘silent talkers’. Photography was also shaped, reshaped, and transformed through hybrid alliances with other media such as painting, cinema, and television. In Kenya, N. V. Parekh (Parekh Studio) from the late 1940s created so-called ‘film-style photography’ in which romance was staged according to Hollywood and Bombay film ideals. Likewise, in the Bakor Studio, people were montaged into televisions and radios, literally implanting photography into other media.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, most photographic portraits were produced in studios. However, as manually processed black-and-white photography gave way to quasi-industrial colour, the studios lost their monopolies. But instead of large-scale amateur photography developing, as in Europe, there emerged itinerant photographers with neither formal training nor studios to meet people's photographic needs. They usually worked in small groups, photographing African tourists and migrant workers. Often agents of the colour labs, they competed with the few remaining studios, in the process creating a flourishing popular art form. Some, like the Likoni Ferry Photographers, Mombasa, established their own distinctive style in the 1990s, building small squatter-like portable studios without electricity or running water. Here they combined paintings, tapestry, paperware, flowers, and sofas to create foreign and global fantasy scenarios for their clients.

East African photographs have many social functions. Portraits were integrated into the cult of the dead, rites of passage, and certain traditions of healing and harming. For instance, pictures are taken of the dying or recently deceased. In central Kenya, framed photographs are placed on the closed coffin, replacing the view of the actual corpse. Along the Kenyan coast, continuing the fusion of photography and magic, Islamic healers use photographic portraits for divination, to diagnose sickness, and to identify those harming their clients. Photographic portraits are also widely incorporated in practices of love magic. In Mombasa and Lamu, the act of photographing itself became part of comprehensive rituals of self-presentation such as weddings. Photographs are also used in gift exchange, and circulate widely, especially at Christmas, when migrant workers send pictures home. Photographs hung on sitting-room walls or stored (uncaptioned) in albums display individual reputation and status. They are also used to construct biographies that are constantly reworked—when, for example, women tear ex-husbands from albums—and thus constitute a flexible repository that constantly reflects the network of changing relations. Thus, while photography was integrated into pre-existing traditions, it also occupied new spaces, shaping memories, identities, and subjectivities in new ways.Heike BehrendBehrend, H., ‘Feeling Global: The Likoni Ferry Photographers in Mombasa, Kenya’, African Arts, 33 (2000). Behrend, H., ‘ “To Make Strange Things Possible”: The Photomontages of the Bakor Photo Studio in Lamu, Kenya’, in R. Beck and F. Wittmann (eds.), Close up: Contextualizing African Media (2003).

Southern Africa

Photography reached southern Africa originally via the Indian Ocean, later than other colonial outposts like Australia and India. Jules Léger from Mauritius opened the first studio in Port Elizabeth in 1846. Though some experimentation took place, the dominant photographic modes soon became commercial daguerreotype portraiture and cartes de visite for European colonial consumption.

Photography was soon harnessed to exploration and science in the southern African hinterlands. James Chapman's stereoscopic images of Victoria Falls in 1862 were barely more successful than those attempted on Livingstone's Zambezi expedition of 1858, but his Damaraland work appeared at the 1867 Paris exhibition. Photography was at this stage in the hands of those seeking knowledge of the African. Governor Sir George Grey encouraged photography along with philological and ethnographic research, and such African portraits as made their way into his collection (which later formed the basis of the South African National Library's photographic archive) were usually taken in the aftermath of conquest and colonial annexation. In the case of both the German anthropologist Gustav Fritsch's (1838-1927) splendid portraits of Xhosa leaders, and the famous Bleek-Lloyd photograph collection of indigenous San, this context is not always apparent.

From the late 19th century onwards, black urban elites also had many studio portraits taken but, in the wake of segregation and apartheid's forced removals, relatively few of them survive as collections. Better publicized by the 1930s were the remarkable studies of Kimberley-based Alfred Duggan-Cronin (c.1874-1954). He used migrant workers at the diamond mines as his original subjects, and focused on ethnic types and material culture, couched in a preservationist discourse that was highly aestheticized, at times even dramatized. Later he followed subjects back to their home areas, where he photographed important historical landscapes in both South Africa and neighbouring territories.

Pictorialist and modernist work generated numerous salons from the early 20th century, but photographs of ‘natives’ usually stuck to preservationist conventions, with subjects decked out in traditional dress. This constituted the bulk of Constance Stuart Larabee's (1914-2000) exhibitions, though she also executed numerous commissions to document social change and economic development. Leon Levson's (1883-?) work is now held up as the first serious documentary photography of working and urban life for Africans, but he too moved between commercial and personal projects. The launching of the magazine Drum in 1950 opened a new era in the photographic documentation of urban life for the majority of South Africans. The spate of photographers who helped to fashion the new urban sensibility included Alf Kumalo (b. 1930), Bob Gosani (1834-72), and Peter Magubane. Ernest Cole (1940-90) later produced a searing documentary statement on black conditions in his House of Bondage (1967).

After Drum's heyday, few magazines supported serious photographic work. Leadership was an exception, with David Goldblatt its long-serving main photographer. Goldblatt acted as mentor to the new generation of progressive photographers appearing in the 1980s, by which time Staffrider, Learn and Teach, and Full Frame provided a forum for documentary work. Since the transition to democracy in 1994 new outlets have appeared, ranging from the Centre for South African Photography with its emphasis on ‘art’ photography to the more documentary-and politics-oriented South African History Online founded by Omar Badsha (b. 1945). The South African National Gallery in Cape Town has published, collected, and exhibited much photographic work. The Johannesburg Biennale in 1995 and 1997 was crucial for many photographic artists, while others have been represented at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, the Venice Biennale, and numerous international exhibitions of South African art and photography. Important also are new art schools and private galleries such as Stevenson in Cape Town and Goodman in Johannesburg. In 1998-9, Cape Town hosted an ambitious exhibition/festival of all-African photography, Eye of Africa.

— Patricia Hayes

See also ‘struggle photography’.

Featured article: African Studio Photography.

Bibliography

• Bull, M., and Denfield, J., Secure the Shadow: The Story of Cape Photography from its Beginnings to the End of 1870 (1970).
• Lundstrom, J.-E. (ed.), Democracy's Images: Photography and Visual Art after Apartheid (1998)

The Greeks called the African continent, or the part of it they knew, Libya. The name Africa was given by the Carthaginians to the territory around Carthage, and was applied subsequently to all of the known continent; it was retained by the Romans when they made the Carthaginian territory a Roman province after the Third Punic War (146 BC). The province was gradually expanded with the planting of new Roman colonies until under the empire it stretched along the north coast from Cyrenaica (which remained Greek-speaking; see CYRENE) to the Atlantic. The area was heavily urbanized; during the second century AD African senators at Rome (who included the orator Fronto) comprised the largest group from the western provinces. The wealth of Roman Africa was proverbial, and was derived chiefly from the export of vast quantities of corn. In the third century Christianity spread rapidly in the province; Cyprian, Tertullian, and Augustine were all African by birth. For the later history see CARTHAGE. See also EGYPT.

This entry contains two subentries:

North Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

This entry includes four subentries:
Central Africa
East Africa
North Africa
West Africa

The second-largest continent, after Asia; located south of Europe and bordered to the west by the Atlantic Ocean and to the east by the Indian Ocean.

• Africa has been the home of great civilizations, particularly in Egypt, along the Mediterranean Sea. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, European nations colonized much of the continent (see colonialism). In the twentieth century, the colonies became independent countries.
• Africa south of the Sahara is sometimes called sub-Saharan Africa.
• Sub-Saharan Africa has been hit especially hard by HIV/AIDS, drastically decreasing the life expectancy of much of the population.

For the most part, Africa's excessive climate isn't very hospitable for wine grapes. They generally are grown only at the northern and southern ends of the continent, the farthest points from the Equator. See also algeria; morocco; tunisia; south africa.

(Note: The north of Africa, including the Sahara and the Sudan, has been Islamic territory for many centuries. For a discussion of Islamic magic and alchemy, see the entry Arabs. Instances of Arabic sorcery are also discussed in the Semites entry.)

Beliefs and practices thought of as occult in Western society were integral to the traditional tribal religions in the southern two-thirds of Africa, especially those concerning sympathetic magic, the cult of the dead, and witchcraft. During the history of this region, the basically pantheistic and polytheistic religions have also been cross-fertilized with Islamic and Christian teachings, creating new beliefs and modifying old ones. Today a large but undetermined number of Africans follow traditional beliefs involving deities, ghosts, and spirits as well as an array of special powers in nature presided over by the supreme entity adopted from Christianity and Islam. The latter, somewhat remote from everyday problems, is believed to largely operate on humans through the many other deities.

Southern Africa

Among the Zulu and other Bantu tribes of equatorial and southern Africa, witchcraft or malevolent sorcery was traditionally practiced—in secret, for the results of detection were terrible. Tribes instituted a caste of witchfinders assigned the task of tracking down witches.

The nineteenth-century writer Lady Mary Anne Barker observed, "It is not difficult to understand, bearing in mind the superstition and cruelty which existed in remote parts of England not so very long ago; how powerful such women become among a savage people, or how tempting an opportunity they could furnish of getting rid of an enemy. Of course they are exceptional individuals; more observant, more shrewd, and more dauntless than the average fat, hard-working Kaffir women, besides possessing the contradictory mixture of great physical powers and strong hysterical tendencies. They work themselves up to a pitch of frenzy, and get to believe as firmly in their own supernatural discernment as any individual among the trembling circle of Zulus to whom a touch from the whisk they carry is a sentence of instant death."

The Zulu witchfinders were attended by a circle of girls and women who, like a Greek chorus, clapped their hands and repeated a low chant, the measure and rhythm of which changed at times with a stomp and a swing of the arm. Ceremonial dress was also an important part of the witch doctor's role, for such things appealed directly to the imagination of the crowd and prepared onlookers to be readily swayed by the necromancer's devices. One of the witchfinders, Nozinyanga, was especially impressive. Her fierce face, spotted with gouts of red paint on cheek and brow, was partly overshadowed by a helmetlike plume of the tall feathers of the sakabula bird. In her right hand she carried a light sheaf of assegais (spears), and on her left arm was slung a small and pretty shield of dappled oxhide. Her petticoat, made of a couple of large handkerchiefs, was worn kiltwise. From neck to waist she was covered with bead-necklaces, goat's-hair fringes, and the scarlet tassels. Her chest rose and fell beneath the baldric of leopard skin, fastened across with huge brazen knobs, while down her back hung a beautifully dried and flattened skin of an enormous boa constrictor.

When the community had resolved that a certain misfortune was caused by witches, the next step was to find and punish them. For this purpose the king summoned a great meeting, his subjects sitting on the ground in a ring or circle for four or five days. The witchfinders took their places in the center, and as they gradually worked themselves up to an ecstatic state, resembling possession, they lightly switched with their quagga-tail one of the trembling spectators, who was immediately dragged away and butchered, along with all of his or her relatives and livestock. Sometimes a whole kraal was exterminated in this way, so reminiscent of European witch-hunts.

Barker also described a sorceress named Nozilwane, whose wistful glance, she noticed, had in it something uncanny and uncomfortable. She was dressed beautifully in lynx skins folded over and over from waist to knee, the upper part of her body covered by strings of wild beasts' teeth and fangs, beads, skeins of gaily colored yarn, strips of snakeskin, and fringes of Angora goat fleece. Lynx tails hung like lappets on each side of her face, which was overshadowed and almost hidden by a profusion of sakabula feathers. "This bird," Barker commented, "has a very beautiful plumage, and is sufficiently rare for the natives to attach a peculiar value and charm to the tail-feathers; they are like those of a young cock, curved and slender, and of a dark chestnut color, with a white eye at the extreme tip of each feather." Among all this thick, floating plumage were interspersed small bladders and skewers or pins wrought out of tusks. Like the other witchfinders, she wore her hair highly greased and twisted up with twine until it ceased to have the appearance of hair and hung around the face like a thick fringe, dyed deep red.

Bent double and with a catlike gait, Nozilwane came forward. Every movement of her undulating body kept time to the beat of the girls' hands and their low crooning chant. Soon she pretended to find the thing she sought, and with a series of wild pirouettes leaped into the air, shaking her spears and brandishing her shield like a bacchante. Nowamso, another of the party, was determined that her companion should not get all the applause, and she too, with a yell and a leap, sprang into the dance to the sound of louder grunts and harder handclaps. Nowamso was anxious to display her back, where a magnificent snakeskin, studded in a regular pattern with brass-headed nails, floated like a stream. She was attired also in a splendid kilt of leopard skins, decorated with red rosettes, and her dress was considered more careful and artistic than any of the others'. Nozilwane, however, had youth and stamina on her side. The others, although they all joined in and hunted out an imaginary enemy, and in turn exulted over his discovery, soon became breathless and spent and were glad when their attendants led them away to be anointed and to drink water.

Central Africa

The magical beliefs of central and eastern Africa were for the most part connected with beliefs and practices concerning the dead and the honoring of images. When the ghost of a dead person was weary of staying in the bush, many believed that the spirit would come for one of the people over whom they exerted the most influence. The spirit would say to that person, "I am tired of dwelling in the bush, please to build for me in the town a little house as close as possible to your own." The spirit would also instruct him to dance and sing, and accordingly he would assemble the women at night to join in dance and song.

Then, the next day, the people would go to the grave of the obambo, or ghost, and make a crude image, after which a bamboo bier, on which a body is conveyed to the grave, and some of the dust of the ground were carried into a little hut erected near the house of the visited, and a white cloth was draped over the door. A curious element of the ritual, which seems to show that these people had a legend something like the old Greek myth of Charon and the river Styx, was a song chanted during the ceremony with the following line: "You are well dressed, but you have no canoe to carry you across to the other side."

Possession

In most preindustrial cultures, epileptic diseases were assumed to be the result of demoniac possession. In much of Africa the sufferer was supposed to be possessed by Mbwiri, and the person was relieved only by the intervention of the medicine man (priest) or a spirit or deity. In the middle of the street a hut was built for the sufferer, and there he resided, along with the priest and his disciples, until cured, or maddened. Towns-people held a continuous revel, including what seemed like unending dances to the sound of flute and drum, for ten days to two weeks, engaging in much eating and drinking all at the expense of the patient's relatives.

The patient at some point danced, usually feigning madness, until the epileptic attack came on accompanied by a frenzied stare, convulsed limbs, the gnashing of teeth. The man's actions at this point were not ascribed to himself, but to the demon that had control of him. When a cure, real or pretended, had been effected the patient built a little house for the spirit image, avoided certain kinds of food, and performed certain duties. Sometimes the process terminated in the patient's insanity; some were known to run away to the bush, hide from all human beings, and live on the roots and berries of the forest.

One European writer observed of the tribal medicine man, "[They] are priest doctors, like those of the ancient Germans. They have a profound knowledge of herbs, and also of human nature, for they always monopolise the real power in the state. But it is very doubtful whether they possess any secrets save that of extracting virtue and poison from plants. During the first trip which I made into the bush I sent for one of these doctors. At that time I was staying among the Shekani, who are celebrated for their fetish [image]. He came attended by half-a-dozen disciples. He was a tall man dressed in white, with a girdle of leopard's skin, from which hung an iron bell, of the same shape as our sheep bells. He had two chalk marks over his eyes. I took some of my own hair, frizzled it with a burning glass, and gave it to him. He popped it with alacrity into his little grass bag; for white man's hair is fetish of the first order. Then I poured out some raspberry vinegar into a glass, drank a little of it first, country fashion, and offered it to him, telling him that it was blood from the brains of great doctors. Upon this he received it with great reverence, and dipping his fingers into it as if it was snap-dragon, sprinkled with it his fore-head, both feet between the two first toes, and the ground behind his back. He then handed his glass to a disciple, who emptied it, and smacked his lips afterwards in a very secular manner. I then desired to see a little of his fetish. He drew on the ground with red chalk some hieroglyphics, among which I distinguished the circle, the cross, and the crescent. He said that if I would give him a fine 'dush,' he would tell me about it. But as he would not take anything in reason, and as I knew that he would tell me nothing of very great importance in public, negotiations were suspended."

The claims of the priest to possess supernatural powers were seldom questioned. He was not only a doctor and a priest who intervened with the spirits and deities—two capacities in which his influence was necessarily very powerful—he was also a witchfinder, and this office invested him with a truly formidable authority. When a man of worth died, his death was invariably ascribed to witchcraft, and the aid of the priest was invoked to discover the witch.

When a man was sick a long time, his neighbors called Ngembi, and if she could not make him well, they called the priest. He came at night, in a white dress, with cock's feathers on his head, carrying a bell and a little glass. He called two or three of the victim's relatives together. He did not speak, but always looked in his glass. Then he told them that the sickness was not of Mbwiri, nor of a ghost, nor of God, but that it came from a witch. They would say to him, "What shall we do?" He would then go out and say, "I have told you. I have no more to say." They then gave him a dollar's worth of cloth, and every night they gathered together in the street and cried, "I know that man who bewitched my brother. It is good for you to make him well." Then the witch made him well.

If the man did not recover they called the bush doctor from the Shekani country. At night he went into the street; all the people flocked about him. With a tiger skin in his hand, he walked to and fro, until, singing all the while, he laid the tiger skin at the feet of the witch. At the conclusion of his song the people seized the witch and put him or her in chains, saying, "If you don't restore our brother to health, we will kill you."

Western Occultism in Africa

Today more than 100 million Africans follow a form of Islamic faith, and an almost equal number some form of Christianity. In addition to Roman Catholic and Protestant faiths, there are many variant forms of Christianity, and many Christian groups have become independent of the older missionary churches and reorganized as indigenous religious bodies. The religious picture has been confused in recent years as a result of the unrest attending the throwing off of colonial regimes and the establishment of autonomous governments. Another important factor in the changes surfacing on the entire continent, in addition to political reform and upheaval, has been the education of many young Africans at American and European universities. As they travel back to Africa with western ideas and the seeds for a new way of economic survival, the scene is likely to change on all fronts—even regarding their own ancient superstitions and folk legends.

In the midst of these changes, Western occult, metaphysical, and mystical literature has circulated through the continent since the 1920s, especially in South Africa, the central African states, and such West African nations as Ghana and Nigeria. Since World War II there has been a noticeable popular response to such ideas. As early as 1925 the Rosicrucians were present in West Africa, and New Thought was introduced into Africa in the 1930s when several American teachers toured the country and assisted in the formation of the School of Practical Christianity in 1937 (now known as the School of Truth). Today a broad range of such groups as the Church of Religious Science, the Unity School of Christianity, Swedenborgians, and the Church Universal and Triumphant are in existence. In the last two decades, guru-oriented groups such as ECKANKAR, Subud, and the Grail Movement, and some of the new Japanese religions have appeared. Numerous gurus, including Maharishi Mehesh Yogi, Satya Sai Baba, and Guru Maharaj Ji have a following. The New Age movement has been particularly strong in South Africa, mostly among the white population, and has provoked the appearance of a reactionary anti-New Age effort.

Most interesting has been the emergence of new indigenous African metaphysical movements. Typical of these are the Spiritual Fellowship and the Esom Fraternity Company, both operating in Nigeria. The latter, for example, has established a training school specializing in the healing arts and sciences and what is called a "cosmic hospital." The Spiritual Fellowship grew out of the literary efforts of A. Peter Akpan, who has developed an eclectic program of spiritual development aimed at attaining the higher levels of consciousness. Yogi Kane is a Hindu teacher operating in the Senegal, where he teaches what he terms "Egyptian" yoga. East and West come together in these new movements in a mutual affirmation of astrology, divination, spiritual healing, and an esoteric approach to life. These indigenous have also become an avenue for the advancement of women who often must assume a secondary role in traditional African religions as well as in Christianity and Islam.

Sources:

Gardiner, John. The New Age Cult in South Africa. Cape Town: Stuikhof, 1991.

Hackett, Rosalind I. J. "New Age Trends in Nigeria: Ancestral and or Alien Religion?" In Perspectives on the New Age, edited by James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

——. Religion in Calabar: The Religious Life and History of a Nigerian Town. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1989.

Oosthuizen, Gehardus C. "The 'Newness' of the New Age in South Africa and Reactions to It." In Perspectives on the New Age, edited by James R. Lewis and J. Gordon Melton. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992.

Parrinder, Geoffrey. African Traditional Religion. London: Sheldon Press, 1974. Reprint, New York: Harper, 1977.

Wellard, James. Lost Worlds of Africa. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1967.